Scandal of the Week

To be more explicit, quoting from this piece by Robert Liddy in the Portland (Maine) Daily Sun:

"The moment marks the highest concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the entirety of human history; at current rates of growth NOAA predicts eight hundred parts per million will be the norm by the year 2100. We are on a climate change path that will make a mockery of political name calling about protection of exotic embassies and render issues of IRS abuse meaningless. Yet not a single major news outlet has offered one minute of analysis of the economic crisis of climate change in the hours of nonstop coverage of political fallout in the presidential race of 2016."

"A legislative bill in the United States Senate named the Environmental Protection Act of 2013 (S 309) was immediately tabled by the senate leadership and not a single word was spoken on this inaction in the reporting media. Regardless of wide support by liberal and conservative economists, no congressional representative has called for consideration of a meaningful Carbon Tax provision."

Tiny Giants Note

After a homestand of heroics, the San Francisco Giants went on the road to play with flashes of brilliance (coming back from 6-0 to win over the Rockies), but also awfully like a Little League team, making odd distracted errors in Toronto and Colorado.  Entertaining still, but still...

One cool note: The Giants brought up Brett Pill, formerly of the Humboldt Crabs, and he doubled and scored against Colorado.

I have the Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates scores on my start page everyday, and it seemed that when one of them won a game, so did the other.  The same with losses.  That's unlikely and one of those selective attention things, I figured.  While I haven't gone day to day through the season, the fact is that when I checked the other day they did have identical won-loss records, 24-17.  That's good enough for the Giants to lead the NL West by a game, but only good enough for third place in the NL Central, where the Pirates are 2 1/2 games behind St. Louis.

Breaking!

The week's biggest scandal!!!

(Unless it's this one!!!!!!)

State of the Climate

Stop me if you've heard this one--summer ice melt in part of Antarctica is the most extensive in a thousand years. Arctic summer sea ice is melting faster than previously believed, and scientists now expect that it will be gone completely in 2050.

A Peruvian glacier has melted 1600 years worth of ice in the last 25.  Professor Wagstaff (author of the article in The Week) sees this as A Bad Omen.

NPR reports: "The Earth's wettest regions are likely to get wetter while the most arid will get drier due to warming of the atmosphere caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, according to a new NASA analysis of more than a dozen climate models."

The LA Times, looking at the same report, emphasizes droughts in temperate areas, and includes a little interactive feature, "Your Take," asking the question: "Will we be able to limit the worst effects of climate change?" Yes? No?  Because why would we take the word of people who might know what they're talking about?

Health experts in the UK warn that the climate crisis could bring malaria and other nasty pest-borne diseases that now bedevil the tropics. California and Arizona are already seeing increases in the normally unfamiliar valley fever, due to persistent drought.  Yet another tree-killing insect is threatening new areas--this time in cities--because of climate heating.

And carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is zooming past the levels humanity has ever seen, and may hit the magic in a bad way number of 400 parts per million, this month.  Scientists, says the NY Times, are Alarmed.  Update: The 400 has in fact been reached, as reported on 5/10.

What's potentially even worse--yes, worse--is the CO2 stored in the oceans.  As hot as it's been getting, the oceans have actually lessened the effects of global heating over the past decade by storing more C02 than usual, but when it returns to its usual behavior--or simply has stored so much in its depths that it rises up and out--global heating will resume increasing, and probably faster.

The Arctic Ocean is already showing other effects of heating, such as higher acid content, that won't be reversed for thousands of years.

So back in March the Biggest Picture study so far was announced--covering some 11,000 years (here's a q and a explanation of the study)-- and this chart was widely (if briefly) disseminated.  Possibly because even chartphobics like me get the picture.

Looking at this and all the data, a no-nonsense, thoroughly rational scientist evaluated it and concluded: Compared to the past, what’s happening in the present is scary. The future is scary as hell.

Still, that spike at the end he said might be overstated, for various scientific, chartcentric reasons.  However he provides another chart that he says is probably more accurate, but is basically just as scary:

Look at the spike at the end. The big, and most importantly the steep, scary spike at the end. That’s not an artifact of the way proxy ages were computed, or how the reconstruction was done, or the effect of proxy drop-out as records become more sparse in the later period. It’s what the thermometers say. Ignore them at your peril. As scary as that is, what’s far more frightening is that it’s not going to stop.

He concludes (repeating himself a bit, but the bolding is his:)

In the span of a century or two, man-made changes to the atmosphere wiped out 5,000 years of natural climate change. People can argue about the uptick at the end of the Marcott reconstruction — I’ll do so myself — but for most who do so, it’s just an attempt to divert attention from the fact that global temperature really has increased in the last century, at a speed not seen in at least the last 11,300 years. We know this, thermometers have made it plain, only those in denial still deny it.
We are changing the climate rapidly — on the geologic time scale, in the blink of an eye. This is exactly the kind of rapid change which has caused extinction events in the past. What’s far more frightening is that it’s not going to stop.

So the argument against this overwhelming evidence is ever more obviously, I just don't believe it, science is divided (yeah, 99.9% v. cranks and folks on petroleum payrolls) and I'm just not...going to...listen.

Nor am I going to let anybody else hear about this.  Denialists and other reactionary GOPers have pretty effectively prevented the climate crisis from being taught or talked about in schools.Some two-thirds of public school students aren't learning about it in school.   That's the subtext of this NPR piece on a traveling climate education project.   But one barnstorming guy is not really much.  More may be on the way, as new nationwide science standards recommend teaching about the climate crisis--for the first time.

But we can look on the bright side--we aren't Saturn!  Not yet!  We may be having bizarre rain and snowstorms in the Midwest, fires in California way early in the season, etc.  But we don't get hurricanes anywhere near the size of the one pictured at the top (in a false color photo from the Cassini spacecraft), which is 30 times larger and has winds twice as fast as the biggest Terran hurricane.  On the other hand, it's only called a hurricane. Our hurricanes need water and Saturn has very very little.  Scientists don't have any idea how that works.  Unfortunately, they know all too well how stuff works here.

Political Grumbling

I've had better things to be depressed about than politics recently, but it's hard to go completely cold turkey.

And the news is not all bad: President Obama's approval is up, congressional GOPers are less than half of it,  most people believe they're to blame for screwing things up.  But of course that doesn't change anything.

Pew also analyzed the 2012 numbers and found that Romney got all of 17% of the non-white vote.  So expect voter suppression to get bigger.

Markey is way ahead in Mass Senate, and only a quarter of Pennsylvanians polled believe that Space Cadet Tom Corbett deserves reelection to the governorship.

On the other hand, there's that depressing congressional race in South Carolina, and the infuriating governor's race in Virginia, with one of the ace rabid right morons running against the Dem candidate Terry McAuliffe, a race which therefore pits a fanatical moron against a major asshole.  And I've seen him as an asshole even before all this emerged.  This is the best VA Dems could do?

So it's maybe time to shift focus and get depressed about climate.

It's Outa Here!

Well, before we get into this week's bad news let's talk some sports.

The NBA playoffs are going into their second round.  If you had to choose which of the three California teams would make it at least that far, it probably wouldn't be the Golden State Warriors and the classic shooting of Stephen Curry (pictured with Kobe), but that's the facts. The Kobe-less Lakers got decisively swept, but I was surprised they even made it to the playoffs at all.  I guess I'm not alone in believing Boy Buss's choice of coach was disastrous from the get-go.  It's not far under the surface in this diatribe by one of LA's leading sportswriters, and I heard it crawl into comments from Magic Johnson.

But even Phil Jackson may not have been able to save them from the repeat of an experiment that failed when he was there: bring in some aging superstars for a team that looks unstoppable, at least if you judge by old highlight reels.  Injuries and lack of chemistry killed that Karl Malone/Gary Payton experiment, and the same factors ruined this season.  Especially injuries.

Injuries to key players are the story for many teams.  Oklahoma, Golden State and Chicago got through the first round despite them, but that's probably it.  Everybody is competing to finally lose to Miami, which has played even better this year, despite injuries.  Right now they're pretty healthy so it's probably pretty safe to snooze through June.

The NFL had their draft, and for all the volumes of words wasted on it, nobody has any idea of who is really going to be helped decisively.  But even with a reputedly strong draft, I still see the Ravens as a lucky one month wonder.  The Steelers seemed to have a good draft, everybody says, but I'm afraid I don't understand how they get better with no help to the offensive line.

Which brings me to the only sport and only team I really enjoy watching, baseball as played by the San Francisco Giants.  In the early season they don't have their dominating starting pitching, but everything else is working as it was last fall.  Lately they're coming from behind a lot, with games being tied and won in the very late innings.  In that they remind me of my 1960 Pirates, and one of  Bob Prince's signature sayings when they squeezed out a come from behind victory: "We had 'em all the way!"

Another 1960 Pirates reference: Pablo Sandoval is the best bad-ball hitter I've seen since Smoky Burgess.

But mostly (as I've said before) they are so much fun to watch.  Especially at home, because even though I've been in that ballpark only once, it's an indelible memory.  The combination of what a great park it is with the great fans--I saw a game in the Barry Bonds era, when there was always excitement and a lot of winning--makes it so easy for me to feel like I'm there while watching it on TV.  So here's this story from this past weekend:

I watched the early innings of the Giants-Dodgers game on Saturday, when the Giants built a 5-1 lead.  Then dinner time and then Saturday night movie time, so I only glanced at the score to see them behind as the Dodgers had scored 9.  Then when our Netflix was over, the game was in the bottom of the ninth, tied 9-9, with Buster Posey up, the bases loaded and one out.  Basically there are only a few ways you don't win with this combination.  First of all, there's Posey, a great hitter, last year's MVP, who won the previous night's game against the Dodgers with homer in the last of the 9th.  Posey had at least a dozen ways to put the ball in play and win the game. He could win the game just by being walked. The only bad things he could do were to strike out or foul out, but the next batter would still come up with the bases loaded.  The worst thing he could do was hit into a double play.  Which is what he did, on the second pitch I think.

So the TV went off, and by the time I got to my computer to check the score--I was prepared to go to my cave to resume watching--the game was over, the Giants had won in the 10th, via a home run, by a player I had never heard of: Guillermo Quiroz.

Later I checked the recap, and found out he was the backup catcher and pinch-hitter, and that he hit it with one out in the 10th.  Much later, just before sleeptime, I turned on the TV--the Sportsnet Bay Area station often replays the entire game but I never know when--and there it was.  I saw immediately that I had turned it on with the score tied 9-9 and the bottom of the 10th.  I then saw there was one out, and I realized this was the guy.  I saw exactly one pitch--it was the home run ball.

What a moment!  The stadium was in delirium, and so was Quiroz.  It was a line shot to left field that he and everybody knew was gone right away.  He was ecstatic on the bases.  He took his cap off, exposing a big round bald spot on the top of his head.  Quiroz was a veteran journeyman with six major league teams that mostly kept him playing in the minors.  This was his first home run of the year.  He won a game with it in extra innings, at home, for the Giants, in very probably the oldest rivalry in major league baseball, the Giants and the Dodgers.

We were all part of a moment in that man's life he will never forget--and unlike a lot of such moments lately, this was one of joy, celebration, accomplishment, fulfillment, a dream come true.    

American Taliban

The otherwise incomprehensible hysteria of rabid rightists about the imposition of Sharia law--which absolutely nobody is really trying to impose--is itself a signal of what's really at work.  Scratch a hysteric and you'll often find that what they fear is what they really want to do, at least in the cases where the opposites are the same.

This is one of them.  Rabid rightists in North Carolina introduced a bill to make Christianity the state religion. This is the equal and opposite of Sharia law, and it is the exact same thing: totalitarian rule by a fanatical sect that is as political as it is religious.

Absolute rule under the banner of a particular religious sect involves a number of factors, and we're seeing all of them in the states under GOPer rule.  First, imposing making that sect's beliefs the law.  Not just in blatant "establishment" but in turning its tenets into reality, as in the many laws restricting access to abortion to the point that it is completely inaccessible.  It's being pretty successful, including in states where it's quite a shock, like Virginia.

But the American Taliban is also political in the sense that it wants power, and will seize it in any way possible.  Thus the national template for voter suppression that has only accelerated since it was beaten back in 2012.  That it didn't work then is no guarantee at all it won't work especially in 2014.

This political power is expensive to get and maintain, so monied allies are necessary, not only the already rabid right billionaires in fossil fuels and banking, not only the direct beneficiaries of GOPer power like the incarceration industry and the gun manufacturers.  But those who are continuing to take over public functions through privatizing everything that government does or should do.  You can see a step towards this with the emergency managers in Michigan, and Florida's attempt to take away local power and vest it in the state government, where economies of scale are available to favored corporations.  Not to mention the imposition of American Taliban policies.

Finally, it seems the American Taliban is organizing its military.  The new National Rifle Association prez is even more outspoken and clear on this than the exec director, if that's possible. Apart from overt calls to arm and militarize against the government, there is the culture war being called for, and the clear attempts to de-legitimize any government not part of the American Taliban, like the administration recently elected by an historically healthy majority.  President Obama is the "fake President" to them--an especially inflammatory bit of rhetoric, given the racism of the rabid right.    

Despite their distance from what the American public in general wants, the GOPer state governments have gotten increasingly bold, not only internally (which they can do without the Washington-centric media noticing) but in revolt against the US Constitution as interpreted by the federal courts and the federal executive. Kansas passed a law preventing the federal government from enforcing its gun laws, the US Attorney-General notified its GOPer governor that the law was unconstitutional, but the governor is not backing down.  Some may see this as a second amendment test case, regarding any federal power to regulate guns and gun safety.  But in essence it is the American Taliban pushing for more power, in this case  illusory but consequential military power.

It's all an all-American mirror image of the Taliban, the Kymer Rouge, the Iranian fundamentalists, etc. back into history.  But this overt and blatant coalition--of reactionary religionists, political McCarthyites like Ted Cruz, Confederate states rightists and racists, reactionary billionaires and the merely amoral greedy--seems pretty new to the USA.

Kill the Poor

There's unfortunately nothing new in the Pew study of the US 'recovery' from the Great Recession, which showed that it was a spectacular recovery for the rich at the expense of everybody else (whose net worth actually dropped between 2009 and 2011), or in New York's analysis, based on its own more sophisticated criteria, that nearly half the city (all four boroughs) is in poverty.

It's against that backdrop however that we judge Washington's failure to support jobs while continuing to lay out corporate welfare, and in particular the very obvious move last week to lessen the pain of well-off air travelers while doing nothing for the poor, working families, elderly, local economies, etc. being materially and even physically hurt by the sequester.

I heard again a theory I hadn't heard in a long while, that now that a lot of labor is no longer necessary in the US, since its been either automated or outsourced, the powers that be are willing if not actively trying to starve those folks out.  The words "kill the poor" were spoken.  It's a forecast of the future I heard from radicals in the 1960s, but this time I heard it on PBS as a description of the present.  Specifically in connection with the incarceration industry, but more generally applicable.

Kill the poor is kind of a paradoxical policy for the GOP, given its white fundie southern base, but the imagery of poverty is racialized now--only black and brown people can be called poor with impunity.  So the policy is part of GOPer racism, if not the complete effect.  Apart from hatred projected onto President Obama, it is evidenced as well in the refusal to fund government functions and therefore government jobs--which owing to non-discrimination policies have been for some years a path to the middle class for black and brown workers who have taken great pains to educate themselves.  And don't think for a minute that isn't part of this hatred for government.

Kill the poor has become part of the increasingly bold savagery institutionalized in GOPer controlled state governments.  At least two states (Ohio and Georgia) have revived the debtors prison by jailing poor people who were unable to pay municipal debts.  As Jim Hightower pointed out, that these acts are unconstitutional under the US and state constitutions has not stopped anybody.

All of this as evidence is buried as fast as it mounts that thousands have been and probably still are being impoverished by banks foreclosing on mortgages--including those in which payments were up to date--and through credit card manipulation.

The wolf of the sequester turns out to be the wolf of the GOP and its corporate allies, aided and abetted way too often by others.

Revelations

The Boston Marathon bombing and aftermath brought out the best and the worst in American life.  You could see them both for example on the same Rachel Maddow program (Wednesday's): the millions in contributions to help the victims, the Rabid Right conspiracy theories and xenophobia.

There are also many kinds of attempts to figure out how to prevent such destructive actions in the future.  Because of the as-yet unknowns and the complexities of the Boston bomber situation--the dynamics of personality, age, family, unique experience as well as political and religious beliefs and information--that add up to never-to-be-completely-knowns.

But surely the point is that whatever those beliefs, motivations, etc. might be in this case or any other, what matters most are the actions taken.  And dealing with those require what much of the Rabid Right won't deal with.

In previous posts I noted various intersections of the bombing and gun debates.  Now there are clear relationships.  It's the NRA and its successful efforts to prevent background checks for people who buy the gunpowder (the "black powder") of the kind used to make the Boston bombs.  And the NRA's very successful efforts to prevent the powder from containing "taggants" or very small markers that could trace the powder back to the person who bought it.  It's been technically possible since the 70s, and advocated by law enforcement etc. but the NRA and its congressional minions have prevented it.

Rachel detailed the absurdity of the current situation regarding background checks.  A person can be put on the terrorist watch list, and therefore be prevented from getting on a commercial airliner.  But they can leave the airport and buy as many guns and as much gunpowder as they want, legally.

In a sane society it might be noticed that  while you can't tell how potentially dangerous someone is from what they say about their beliefs or what they read, you have a better chance by knowing how many weapons and how much bomb-making material they've acquired.

That doesn't make sense to the Rabid Right, because government is the enemy, and they need those guns and bombs to defend themselves, or kill abortion doctors and other evil people.  They are so close to being the GOPer mainstream now partly because of gun manufacturer money, on top of all that oil money etc.

In terms of the electorate, we're probably seeing a time lag phenomenon: their time is demographically gone, but demography hasn't quite caught up to political structures.  However, this reactionary phase is lengthened and made more powerful and dangerous by the uber-wealthy who use this dwindling group for their own interests.  Money has a multiplier effect.  Together these elements are paralyzing the federal legislature, weakening government's ability to respond to needs at every level.  We're in the deep water of insanity, with no clear idea how close to shore we might be.

The Forest Planet

Earth was a forest planet.  Forests and oceans.  Humankind cut down most of the forests, thereby longterm cutting its own throat.

Emerald Isle?  Ireland has no forests anymore.  The Black Forest of Germany?  It's a cake.  Greece?  Not for milennia.  The great pine forests of eastern America, gone, gone, gone.  The precious redwoods of California, 95% gone.

Forests (and oceans) have been protecting us from our own idiocy throughout the industrial age by compensating for the carbon overload in the atmosphere.  It's a losing battle now.  And as temperatures rise (or fail to fall as far) more diseases and insects that prey on trees are successfully killing the remaining forests.

Humankind, more powerful that smart, is just learning how little it actually knows about forests, about trees and the Earth.  Earth Day is a good day to remember that.

Over at Books in Heat  is my review of a book that notes this context in the course of telling the remarkable story of David Milarch and his project to clone the champion trees and reforest the planet.  The project has had its ups and downs, but today it got some fanfare for planting two dozen clones of California redwoods in seven countries around the planet.  These include clones taken from a stump, 35 feet in diameter, some 4,000 years called the Fieldbrook Stump, which sits nursing new growth redwood just a few miles from where I live.

It's a publicity move that worked, timing it to the U.S. Earth Day, but the project is not all feel good public relations.  For one thing, there's an easily understood rationale for cloning the biggest and oldest trees: their DNA is survivor stuff.  As threats to forests from climate, weather, pests and disease increase in the Climate Crisis era, surviving is going to be a challenge.

It's also a more sophisticated project than even that, because these trees are just not planted randomly anywhere.  Though our redwoods got the headlines today, champion trees of various species are planted where they can thrive and do the most good, and in ways that encourage forest growth, not just tree growth. For instance, willows are particularly good at detoxifying rivers.

Plus the "cloning" may get attention and sound all high tech, but many of the methods are very old, and don't involve test tubes.  They do involve a lot of care and precision.  And luck.

There are a lot of efforts underway to get Gaia through this long crisis.  Some are simple (though not simple enough for politicians) and some are complex, technological and visionary.  (Some of course are technological and stupid, guaranteed to make things a hell of a lot worse.)  But there are few as simple and soaring as this, as grand and as just very clearly right.  Reforest the Earth.
  

The Week in Review

Of all the moments in the Boston events last week, this is the one that sticks most in my mind--the audio of the firefight in Watertown, recorded from a home that's both near and far from the action--far enough that amidst the sound of the shooting, there's the sound of barking dogs and a bird.  It's the barking dogs and the bird that got to me.

Otherwise, there's this summary of the events, with all the misinformation left out.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The most inspirational literature I ever read was Dostoevsky or Camus.  Then I believe his assertions when he says you only have one choice in your life: it's whether or not to commit suicide.  If you don't commit suicide, you have to treat your life with a great deal of energy and assertiveness."

Jim Harrison

A brief personal coda.  I'm reminded that the last time I was in Boston, we stayed with friends in Watertown.  Even that was more than a decade ago. They still live there, and teach at universities in Boston.  We knew them from Pittsburgh, and we hope they got through all this okay.  Update: We've heard from them, and they did.   

Looking back on these posts, somewhere between a third and a half of what was said was wrong.  At least according to the narratives now.

Now things go into the longer process.  Already conflicting information on the suspects, though the older is getting really bad press.  Already politics is entering, on how the suspect is to be prosecuted--the Obama administration is insisting on civilian courts, and I think commentators are right that Boston public will insist on it.

It turns out that these guys did live on Norfolk St. in Cambridge, very close to where I lived, though that was years before either of them was born.  Apparently it is still a predominantly a Portuguese neigbhorhood.  The buildings, the layout of the wood frames,the colors, very much like the buildings where I lived in a first floor apartment on Columbia St. 

So it adds to the strangeness for me, to feel connected and yet distant.  The people I knew in Cambridge in those years are mostly long gone, and I expect that the place is both different and familiar. 

As for how this all played out, the first such event in the era of ubiquitious cell phones and social media, there were pluses and minuses, and in his statement President Obama warned against rush to judgment against entire groups. 

But right now crowds are spontaneously gathering on Boston Common, and I expect in Harvard Square, which is itself a repudiation of the terror theory.  People not afraid to gather in public.

All in all, the resilience and ability to cooperate, both of ordinary people and public servants, has been heartening.

There are so many police vehicles and so many people on the street in Watertown cheering, it's like a nighttime parade.

People in Watertown have come out of their homes, lining the street, cheering the police as they leave.

Suspect is alive and in custody, NBC is reporting.

At the very least the police forces have the boat surrounded, and as night falls they have night vision.  There are conflicting reports on whether the suspect is still alive, perhaps even talking to police.  Now it's not certain there was a fire.  So nothing much is clear except they think they have the suspect cornered.  A resident noted that thing are very quiet.

It's about 12 hours after I last posted and essentially nothing happened until the last few minutes.  It looks as though the suspect is cornered in a boat in a driveway.  It is just outside the original 20 block perimenter in Watertown.  One answer to why they were fairly confident he was still here is that he was wounded in the original firefight.  Still, they were almost ready to give up the search in this area.

A tip from a woman who saw a ladder that was moved, blood on the tarp over the boat, and then helicopters got a heat signature--copters hadn't been able to fly most of the time because of low ceiling.

There were sounds of shots and now a report that there is a fire on the boat, which has gasoline aboard.  The general reporting is that this is coming to an end.

Also a detail: the order to stay in your homes in Watertown was carried by robocalls, so people in the middle of the night got a call.

The huge military/law enforcement presence seems to be now concerned that the suspect could still have a bomb, even a suicide bomb.  His older brother had a device strapped on him when he was shot.

I see there's some new information: the older brother was out of the country for six months last year.  There is a sister in New Jersey, who may have been bullied by the older brother.  The father is abroad.  The mother seems to be claiming this is all an FI plot.  Others are being questioned, roommates or former roommates of the suspect.

Flash bangs were thrown into the boat, to stun the suspect.  That might be the source of the fire.

8 am in Boston, as the "shelter in place" reccommendation is extended to the city of Boston, as well as the other towns.  So essentially Greater Boston has stopped everything.  Nobody is supposed to leave their homes, or let anyone into them.  This may be the first shelter in place order for a major American city ever.

A police spokesperson says this may go on for hours.

Several of the NBC outside commentators are really going with the Chechnya connection, and the connection to terrorism there.  They seem to be ignoring the information that neither was born in Chechnya and the suspect at large has been in America since he was nine.  There's no information released about them leaving the U.S.  So it's jumping to conclusions.

If there's any reason now that this guy is still in Watertown, they're not saying.  Nobody has mentioned either where they lived in Cambridge, but that might be because the police and FBI are there.

It's after 5 am here.  I'm fading, so pretty soon I may stop talking to myself in blog form and get some sleep.

Boston Police etc. are warning people away from Norfolk St. in Cambridge, maybe a block or two from where I used to live in Cambridge.  It may be where they're detonating a bomb, maybe something else.  A dangerous situation they're saying. 

Now they're reporting that these brothers have been in the U.S. for more than 10 years, since they were children.  Though they were born in Russia, it seems they grew up here.  I'd thought before that if they lived in Cambridge and weren't well to do, they might live in the area near where I lived, East Cambridge, and that's where Norfolk St. basically is.

The whole MBTA is shut down.  So is Amtrak from Boston to Providence.  So people waking up in the Boston area are waking up to this.  I think I heard someone say that the violence last night started in Central Square, which is very near where I lived in Cambridge.  I bought groceries every Saturday at the Purity Supreme supermarket there.  I'm not sure why an MIT police officer would respond to a robbery attempt in Central Square, so maybe I heard wrong. 

As this goes on, my visual memory is returning of these places. 

Boston Police just announced they've conducting a controlled explosion in Cambridge.  Earlier reports said that as the suspects fled Cambridge they threw bombs out of the car. 

Now it seems the guy on the run had been living in Cambridge for several years, even went to high school there.

Police still assembling, and apparently military assets assembling in the mall parking lot in Watertown.

AP is reporting the bombing suspects are from Chechnya in Russia.  Pete Williams is being quoted as saying they are apparently Chechnan who had been living in Turkey.  NBC is not yet confirming this, but a commentator slipped up and mentioned it, mentioning also the Islamicist terrorism in Chechnya.

At this point it seems Cambridge and Boston in general is shut down and locked down.  The universities and schools across Boston are closed.  People are literally being kept off the streets.  Incredible.

Pete Williams is reporting that they are brothers, 19 and 20.  The one at large is Cambridge resident.  Tsarnaez is the name being identified.  No nationality given, but repeated that they've been in the U.S. for a year or so.  The one at large is 19.

Less emphasis on the idea that police suspect they know where he is.  A lot of public transit is shut.  NBC estimates 320,000 in the area around Watertown are being told to stay home.

It's almost 3 a.m. here, 6 am there, and the start of the day.  But Watertown is locked down--no transit, no businesses opening, nobody going out or in.  Pete Williams is reporting that the police believe they know the building where the guy at large is holed up.  That answers my question, which is how do they know that he is still in Watertown.  He got away reportedly by flooring an SUV and breaking through police lines.  It would seem he would drive as far as he could.  But they believe they know where he is.

These guys were heavily armed with guns and explosives.  Nobody knows what the guy on the run has with him.

I've been away from the TV for a half hour or so, not much has changed, and the print media via goggle news seems to have caught up.

Pete Williams reports that although the identities of the suspects are not confirmed, the FBI thinks they know who they are--both with overseas military training, who have been in the U.S. for a year or so. 

It's approaching 5 a.m. in Watertown.  These are all places near where I used to live.  But a lot of people there probably have no idea what has gone on overnight, and the warnings not to answer their doors is something they haven't heard.  They're also considering not reopening the transit system this morning, as long as the second guy is at large.

One detail I saw on a report: that in the Watertown firefight, one of these guys threw a bomb towards police and shouted "Fire in the hole!"  That's a phrase popularized in the ongoing TV series Justified.  In the pilot, a white supremacist shouts this as he shoots a rocketlauncher at a black church.  His job in coal mines was explosives, and before setting off the explosives in the mine he would shout Fire in the hole. 

It's about 1:20 am here in CA.  A couple of hours ago I turned on the TV to see the replay of the Boston memorial service and President Obama's great speech (which I'd seen on my computer), and was greeted with flashing lights and chaos in Watertown, Mass.  A chase that apparently began at MIT resulted in a firefight in Watertown.  Right now they're playing home video of that firefight and explosions between two suspects and police.  The gunfire is interlaced with barking dogs and birds calling.

I've been watching all this in real time.  The police are now announcing that one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing identified last evening with photos from the FBI was involved in the firefight and is now at large in Watertown.  One of the suspects was killed in the firefight.  The officers looked pretty worried, and were warning residents to stay indoors.  In reference to the photos released earlier, it is the young man in the black cap who was killed, and the one in the white cap who is on the run.

It's very weird, watching this unfold in real time in the middle of the night.  Through all the TV blather I've also been monitoring online.  The New York Times actually had the most precise story from an eyewitness to the firefight. 

This started with an MIT officer shot and killed when investigating a distrubance complaint, possibly a car-jacking, a robbery at a 7-Eleven.  The dots are yet to be assembled, and the situation is ongoing.  Pete Williams of NBC, who has been the most reliable reporter on this entire story from the bombing onward, suggests that this all started when the two guys decided to get out of town and car-jacked a vehicle.  It may be that the whole photo thing was the FBI's way of flushing out the suspect.  That's my speculation, not his.

Gutless Check

On Wednesday, Republicans in the U.S. Senate forced a 60 vote supermajority on gun regulation legislation.  The compromise bipartisan bill to expand background checks lost by 5 votes, though it had a majority.

In response, President Obama called it a shameful day in Washington, in an angry statement in the White House rose garden, surrounded by parents of gun violence victims, and gun violence victims themselves, like former Member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords.  He said the NRA and other violence promoters  “willfully lied about the bill” in order to scare gutless senators into opposing even a straight vote on it.

 Gabrielle Giffords wrote an oped published in the New York Times Thursday edition:

"I watch TV and read the papers like everyone else. We know what we’re going to hear: vague platitudes like “tough vote” and “complicated issue.” I was elected six times to represent southern Arizona, in the State Legislature and then in Congress. I know what a complicated issue is; I know what it feels like to take a tough vote. This was neither. These senators made their decision based on political fear and on cold calculations about the money of special interests like the National Rifle Association..."

"Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on."

"I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences."

"Mark my words: if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s. To do nothing while others are in danger is not the American way."

Martin's Dream Deferred

Martin Richards died at the age of 8.  His little sister, who loved to dance, has lost a leg, and may lose the other.  His mother has a severe brain injury.  All of this the result of one of the homemade bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon--bombs that did little damage to property, but were made to inflict pain and horrible damage to human beings.  Made to hurt people.

When will Martin Richards' dream come true?  Not today, when it is likely now that the cowards of the U.S. Senate will not even allow votes on gun regulation measures.  They're using the Boston tragedy as cover for their cowardice.

Does it matter that one eight year old was killed by a crude bomb, while 20 six year olds were killed by the bullets of a high tech rifle?  It does not matter to those children.  As a society we do a great deal to protect against such a bomb.  But our Congress is about to decide to do nothing to protect children against guns, especially those that are at least as efficient at hurting people as one homemade bomb, though the guns at Sandy Hook were more lethal.

The U.S. at all levels of government spends immense sums in trying to prevent terrorist bombs from exploding.  Thousands of people are trained and deployed around the world.  Those bombs and components that can be outlawed, are outlawed.  People have to make their own bombs.  Unfortunately, the ingredients are not uncommon--they mostly all have other legitimate functions.  Guns are lethal weapons to begin with.

Nobody gets to openly bring a bomb to a public place, to a political rally.  But last week a group of mothers demonstrating in support of gun regulations were surrounded by men with guns.  Legally.  

All guns and bullets are dangerous to begin with.  They go off by accident or by stupidity or innocence.  They   are lethal weapons that are too easy to use in anger, or to intimidate. It used to be common sense to regulate how they are used and where they can be carried.

Some guns and bullets have only one function: to kill as many people in as short a time as possible, which they did at Sandy Hook when they killed 20 six year olds and several adults in five minutes of nearly continuous firing, by a coward who brought unthinkable firepower provided legally by his mother to face defenseless children at an elementary school.

No more hurting people.  Too much to ask, Martin.  Our leaders can't even agree on doing something just so that fewer people will be hurt and maimed and killed.  Anywhere, anytime.  Tens of thousands of people, many hundreds of children killed and maimed by guns, every year.

We don't need terrorists.  We've got the GOPer Congress.

Rest in Peace, Martin.  Those of us still alive have to keep working towards your dream.  In our own lives, and as citizens.